A power-assisted motor-vehicle door latch as described in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 4,892,339 has a housing formed with a laterally open recess in which the bolt is receivable, a latch fork formed with a fork seat and with at least one detent, and a fork pivot on the housing supporting the fork for pivoting between a locked and a semilocked position with the seat directed away from the fork pivot and the bolt engaged in the seat and an unlocked position permitting the bolt to enter and exit the seat and recess. An operating plate pivotal on the housing about an axis substantially parallel to the fork pivot carries the pivot of a latch pawl which is pivotal on the link plate into and out of a position engaging the detent and thereby retaining the fork in the semilocked position. A motor connected to the operating plate can pivot same about its axis and, when the pawl is engaged with the detent, pivot the fork into the locked position. A door handle and a link connected between the handle and the pawl can pivot same out of engagement with the detent in any position of the fork.
Thus with this system the operating plate is pivoted to power-close the door, thereby pivoting the pawl and using this pawl to push the fork around into the fully locked position. The user of the latch need merely push the door into the semi-locked position; the motor will take over from here and pull the door fully into the locked position.
Such an arrangement therefore moves through four positions: open, ready to latch, latched, and ready to open, and must move through them sequentially. Once the door is latched and it is to be opened by its motor, which is typical for a trunk lid or door, the mechanism must laboriously move through the ready-to-open position to the open position, entailing some delay. It is possible to avoid this by providing a separate actuator or motor to open the latch, but this increases the cost of the system intolerably.